Electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, and wearable devices, have become ubiquitous. The electronic devices often wirelessly communicate with remote servers and/or other devices over various types of connections, such as wireless local area networking (WLAN) (e.g., Wi-Fi, etc.), wireless wide area networking (WWAN) (e.g., LTE, CDMA, GSM, etc.), and personal area networking (PAN) (e.g., Bluetooth, ZigBee, etc.). Data may be transmitted and received by the electronic devices in order to facilitate the use of the electronic devices. For example, users of electronic devices may be able to communicate using email, phone calls, SMS, etc. by receiving and transmitting data via a connection.
Wearable devices, in particular, are preferred by certain users because of their compact size, portability, and their ability to communicate without the need for the users to also carry a larger device as well. For example, data about users, such as health-related information, can be more easily collected using wearable devices and directly transmitted to remote servers from the wearable devices. As another example, wearable devices may receive email, SMS, and other types of messages, and/or be used for mapping and directions.
However, wearable devices and other relatively small electronic devices may have limited communication performance, due to their size and placement on a user. For example, antenna for different types of communication (WLAN, WWAN, PAN, GPS, etc.) need to be integrated into the small package of a wearable device. These antennas may have reduced performance, e.g., efficiency and bandwidth, because the free-space wavelengths of the frequencies used by these different types of communication are greater than the physical size of the small electronic devices. Furthermore, the placement of wearable devices on a user can also reduce antenna performance due to impedance loading and loss effects. The reduced performance of the antennas can lead to slower data rate transmission, reduced battery life, and decreased user satisfaction. While it is possible to mitigate these effects by making the electronic devices larger and/or placed farther from the body of the user, such solutions would defeat the purpose of having and using a small electronic device, particularly in the case of wearable devices.
Accordingly, there is an opportunity for systems and methods that address these concerns and enable more consistent communications capabilities of small electronic devices to improve user experience and satisfaction.